Leaders in EDI: W Series’ Catherine Bond-Muir, Wasserman’s Lindsay Labennett & Nascar’s Brandon Thompson

In today’s episode, we bring you a conversation with the CEO of the all-female racing championships, and two diversity heads from leading sports companies.

Leaders in EDI is a monthly series covering news, views, comments and debates happening across the equality, diversity and inclusion space. It also shines a spotlight on the progress being made and the challenges being faced in EDI across sport. 

Our first conversation, beginning at 17:32, is a Q&A with Catherine Bond-Muir, CEO of the W Series. We caught up with Catherine last month over Zoom, after we covered the W Series’ deal with Sky in last month’s ‘What’s Happening in the Timeline?’ segment. Bond-Muir educates us on the W Series and their mission, the need to platform women in sport and why partnerships like those with Sky and ESPN are so important.

At 31:18, we then move to our next interview, which was a live podcast recording, recorded in May as part of our inaugural 4SE event. Our regular host Javan Odegah and Leaders Managing Director Laura McQueen are joined by Lindsay Labennett, the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Wasserman and Brandon Thompson, Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion at Nascar. In a practical, engaging and insightful session, the group discuss the need for measuring inclusion, what data points to look for, and the need to look internally before trying to make progress externally, all the while giving their views on inclusion riders, running your own race and why you should avoid the ‘copy and paste’ method.

The Leaders in EDI podcast is part of the Leaders Meet: Diversity Series, delivered in partnership with Meta, which provides a platform for executives within sport to come together to drive diversity across the industry, accelerate the pace of change and inspire the next generation of executives, through thought-leadership events and digital forums. To find out more about the Leaders Meet: Diversity series, please visit https://info.leadersinsport.com/l/856843/2021-04-21/hfhrj